Lauda & Jaguar

. . . LIKE A FOURTH LIFE

Niki Lauda: The Jaguar Years

>As the things are going in most cases: The stronger party outvotes the better one.<
Titus Livius (59 BC- 17 AD)

The show was short, fast and really good. Niki Lauda had tried to make one thousand couples to come in front of Vienna`s famous Burgtheater , the city´s most important opera house, to waltz, in the night, at icy cold and at running television cameras - at Thomas Gottschalk´s Wetten Dass ... (Make a bet), Europe´s most successful entertainment programme, produced by the great broadcasting companies under public law ZDF, ORF and SRG together, he has become nearly a regular for two decades. This time not a sponsor of a bet, but being the co-presenter of the city´s bet Lauda nearly out-qualified Germany´s oldest sunnyboy at the evening of the second Sunday in Advent of 2002, in spite of top stars like Michael Schumacher, Robbie Williams and Shakira taking part. Less couples than demanded came there and Gottschalk had not to disappear in Vienna´s dark sewerage system as it had once been done by The Third Man. The day before the entertainer had had to go into a luxury brothel disguised as Santa Clause, to keep a betting debt from a show before. For the same reason Niki Lauda once had to go through the Long Beach pit lane by scooter. For many years Lauda is commentating the highlights of each Grand Prix for private television company RTL precisely, clearly and with a lot of biting humour.

He had risen from the dead, had retired and come back after two years. And each time he had become world champion. Therefore he is called Le Magnifique in France. Being the winner of 25 Grand Prix he had scored the same number of successes as the legendary Jim Clark, who is considered being the best driver of all times by many people until now. He had founded Lauda Air out of nothing and made it become one of the five best airlines of the world, inspite of the total loss of a Boeing 767 in 1991 without their responsibility. Lauda, the flight pioneer is Charles Lindbergh and Wernher von Braun in one person. As a Ferrari advisor he had reformed Maranello´s structures fundamentally during the nineties to make Jean Todt and then Michael Schumacher join them. A little later the greatest series of victories in Grand Prix History began, the world was not able to count Grand Prix wins and worldchampionship titles so fast. For this reason Lauda was the Piccolo Commendatore, before Michael Schumacher received this title really by the Italian State´ president in autumn 2002. Meanwhile Lauda had to undergo a kidney transplantation, but he had not leave the cockpits of his properly styled Boeing 767s and 777s. With German Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines (whom he had delivered fierce battles for many years)he had got the most German language speaking airlines on board as shareholders. But the one partner, Lufthansa, had stabbed him into the back instead supporting him as a White Knight. The other one, full of old dubious comrads and therefore always ready for intriguing, had seen the time to come for a putsch. Niki Lauda cleared his modern furnished office at the Vienna-Schwechat airfield to retire from the presidency of Lauda Air.

Dr Wolfgang Reitzle is something like the Errol Flynn of the German managers. Always dressed fine, but discreetly, the engineer is a gentleman, who rises out of the masses of nameless technicians in a country every sixth is depending on the automotive field. Dr Reitzle is married to the not less famous journalist Nina Ruge, having got a daily show at the ZDF programme as the glamour girl of German television. Before he overtaken the Premier Automotive Division of Ford with the makes of Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo, and Rover and Lincoln, Dr Reitzle was a member of the board of directors at BMW for many years. The return of the Munich car manufacturer into Grand Prix Racing had happened by his decisive personal support.

When Dr Reitzle had started working for Ford, the Team of Jaguar Racing had been confronted with pure chaos. The founder of the team, Sir Jackie Stewart, who had at least scored a Grand Prix win being constructor in his own rights (in 1999 at the Nuerburgring with Johnny Herbert), had already lost control of the whole outfit. His son Paul Jaguar Racing´s managing director had been a cancer sufferer after only a few month doing the job to be force to retire from his position for immidiate medical treatment in the USA. Later Sir Jackies´s wife Helen and finally he himself was confronted with that fate. Ford´s highest boss had sent Neil Ressler over the Atlantic Ocean to replace Paul, but this man had got only minor experiences in motorsport. The operating business was handed over to Bobby Rahal. The US-American had driven two Grand Prix for the team of Austro-Canadian oil millionaire Walter Wolf. In the CART scene he had aquired an excellent reputation both as a driver and as a team principal and for Ford he always had been a solid partner. In the motorsport environment of the United States of America, that is influenced a lot more by entertainment elements, and for this reason also being more business than that one in Europe, a friendly behaviour full of each others´respect is practised. Who does his job this way in Grand Prix Racing, is the bag, not the hunter.

Dr Reitzle had been absolutely confident of this situation. New structures had been created, Jaguar Racing, the engine shop of Cosworth and the electronic company Pi Research had been put under the roof of the newly found Premier Performance Division. Reitzle had signed up with Niki Lauda as a business strategist, not for doing the daily management. The man, who "had been expelled from Austria like a dog" , moved to the City of London, where he once had lived as a 22 years old March driver. Now he wore a green Jaguar shirt with his usual jeans, added by the red baseball cap, first with the logo of Italian food group parmalat on it (as he had done for more than two decades), then with that one of German heating manufacturer Viessmann. By the way a few years ago Lauda had got the offer to wear a green cap in the colours of Austrian brewery Goesser . He rejected it, when his employees had not stopped making jokes, when watching Lauda wearing the prototype version of the cap coming into airline´s office.

Neither enough room nor a windtunnel had been available at the Milton Keynes John young Stewart Building (named after the complete name of Sir Jacke Stewart. CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacturing) had not been on an update level. The aerodynamicists sat more in aeroplanes than in their construction offices to commute between England headquarters and the windtunnel of Swift in Calafornia. The faclility in the USA was second class standard. Jaguar Racing even had been the small Stewart team now supplied with the big budget of Ford. The expectations within the group and in the public became greater and greater. Niki Lauda worked harder that at his time being the president of Lauda Air. Now Jaguar Racing was his life.

Niki Lauda convinces by his presence, not by great words. He is no politician and no diplomat. He is a technocrat, a logician without compromises. I remember the opening ceremony of the 1984 Essen Motor Show, when he just had become world champion for the third time. The conference centre had been overcrowded, everybody had been seeking everbody, before Prince Metternich made his opening speech. Nobody saw the other one really, but everbody felt: Lauda is already there.

"About a Lauda is written in the economy part of the newspaper, not on the sports page", once the grandfather had explained the family´s ethos. From time to time Niki Lauda is mentioned in both sections. "Better a wrong decision, that no one," is his philosophy in life and job. Neither the bosses of great international groups nor the powerful leaders of the trade unions like it. Lauda does not go away from conflicts with lobbyist from where they ever would come from. In spite of coming out of a wealthy Vienna family, he always remained an industrial rebel. That gives him glory, that gives him prestige. Charisma in a collective always makes troubles. Only one hour after his 1976 fire accident at the Nuerburgring, that´s consequences had not been clear at that time, Lauda should have been mobbed to the position of Ferrari´s team principal (that had been occupied with Luca di Montezemolo so far). Maranello wanted to get rid of him, but to stay with him the same time, because as a driver he was considered a dead man. In the hour, when the remains of the accident were collected on the Nuerburgring track, Emerson Fittipaldi was offered the Ferrari with the number one on it. Lauda is an uncomfortable boss, a captain to enter the vessel first to leave it last. If necessary the perfectionist takes the cloth himself.

When Lauda had been inaugurated CEO of the Premier Performance Division in spring 2001, both at Ford and Jaguar Racing a change of jobs took place only known from the German Football League Bundesliga. Within only three years (from 2000 to 2002) Milton Keynes had got five different bosses. In the middle of 2001 Bobby Rahal had tried to take Heinz Harald Frentzen away from Jordan and technical guru Adrian Newey from McLaren, but both transfers failed. Dr Reitzle sent the dismissal to the US-American, who liked living in England so much for a while together with his family. In contrast to the original plan, from now on Niki Lauda was responsible for the daily management runnig Jaguar Racing himself. As his adjutant he chose Guenther Steiner from South Tyrol belonging to Italy, who had worked at Ford´s rally sport department. A German, an Austrian, a German language speaking Italian, added by young André Lotterer (half Belgian, half German) as the test driver, on the top of the British traditional make of Jaguar, that seemed to be a little too much for many people in the U.K.

At the beginning Austrians always are confronted with having to do a tough job in Britain. Jochen Rindt had sent flowers and other little gifts to the secretary of Cosworth´s engine shop at Northampton to be able to buy Formula 2 engines of acceptable quality. But the breakthrough came within a few races. Like the Italians, the Britons love emotional, folk heroes. Then they never let them fall down also in times of crisis - in contrast to the Germans. Since he had driven March and B.R.M. Grand Prix cars from 1971 to 1973, Niki Lauda is rewarded highest respect in the British public. The educated technicians like him less, because Lauda, who once had failed to pass his O-Levels exam and who had been sacked as a mechanic apprentice, is a dangerous rival to them. As an airman Lauda has got the type rating, the licence, for all big carriers of US-American aeroplane manufacturer Boeing. Max Mosley, the powerful F.I.A. president, already in 1972 had been so convinced of Laudas technical abilities, that he had wanted to sign a long year contract for a lot of money with him, when being the managing director of his former team. But in those days at March Engineering they had been so short of money, that each penny had had to be turned threetimes in Bicester, before spending it. In the town of the legendary train robbers of 1963, Niki Lauda opened Jaguar´s first windtunnel of their own in spring 2002.

At that time the Jaguar Cosworth R3 already had been revealed being a bad design. The chassis bent, the aerodynamics were too old, and also some suspensions had broken because of massive problems with the joins of titanium and carbon fibre parts. Steve Nichols, who once had introduced the material of carbon fibre into Grand Prix Racing before becoming Niki Lauda´s race engineer at Mclaren, retired from his position of the technical director of Jaguar Racing. Guenther Steiner had to take over also this position, but also temporarily, but no successor for Nichols could be found until the end of 2002. The team with the big cat as the company´s symbol meanwhile had got a bad reputation for job candidates, the office chairs in Milton Keynes were considered being ejection seats. And above all the employees was the overlord Sir Jackie Stewart. He had been a triple world champion as Lauda, always at Ken Tyrrell, always using Ford Cosworth engines, but he had won two Grand Prix more than the Austrian. Confronted with family problems and himself poor with his health, he officially only was an advisor of Jaguar Racing but still belonging to their board of directors. Stewart always says and represents the opinion of his own, but the problem is, that there are so many versions of this opinion available, that irritations are the consequences at least. But Stewart is not paid by Ford (to whom he is related by a lifelong contract) to critize the own company, but for doing public relations work. But Stewart is already the past at Jaguar Racing, while Lauda represents the future.

To lead a Grand Prix team is per se difficult enough. If the directors of great international groups, to whom politics and intrigues belong to their daily job, reign into that team, things become really uncomfortable. Of course, all racing teams are companies with the need to earn money, but they are also institutions governed by the rules of the world of sports. Already from this fact contradictions of important consequences develop. At Jaguar Racing Niki Lauda and his driver Eddie Irvine (who had finished third place each in the Monaco 2001 and Monza 2002) were the only factors of personal stability for a time of two years. The instability in the basic company at Detroit was corresponding with that one at the racing team. To make a winner out of a new Grand Prix team takes a minimum of half of a decade. Motorsport people have got this patience, group directors have got not. In motor racing you need the smell of the stable, passion and a high level of tolarance for frustration, in industry some university diplomas and sharp elbows are sufficient enough. In motor racing the truckie wants to have some cans of beer with you at the end of work, in economy you are dressed into tails to be sent to the opera ball. Company directors and team principals will never understand each other really.

Four commercial aeroplanes, each of the Boeing types 757 and 767 (that can be flown with the same licence), hijacked by suicide assassins, had changed our world faster on September 11th, 2001, that all pioneers in the history of technolgy had been able to do before. In the Cologne studio of RTL Niki Lauda is analyzing the terror attacks onto New York City and Washington, D.C. and comes to the conclusion: I had been a genius crime of extraordinary brutality. At Wall Street the stock exchange had been closed for some days, and already some time before, a recession had shown after a decade of boom. When the New York Stock Exchange was opened again, things only went downhill. The Ford Motor Company began to make enormous losses, nearly 20,000 jobs were cut, but Jac Nasser was not forced out of his board of directors in October 2001 caused by that fact, but because he had lost his personal authority in the country governed by the simple ideologist George W. Bush within a short while because of his Arabic roots.

Beside the Australian Paul Stoddart, also an airline enterpreneur, Niki Lauda is the only team principal in Grand Prix Racing, who is able to drive his racing cars. In contrast to the great driver-engineers of epoques gone by like Sir Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and John Surtees, to mention only the best known ones, Ron Dennis and his rivals depend on the informations given by their drivers. To come into the very special world of the Grand Prix driver, that once had been described by Ayrton Senna pretty romantically, they are not able to do. Niki Lauda is. In 1999, at his 50th birthday, he had driven the McLaren Mercedes MP4/98T double-seater, not only with the members of his family, but also with Spain´s King Juan Carlos on board. The monarch is a versatile sportsman steering sailing vessels and flying helicopters. Niki Lauda´s younger son Matthias drove in Spanish Formula 3 in 2002 and Lucas, the older one, had found the sponsors needed for the project as a manager, and that without the knowledge of their father. In February 2002 Niki Lauda tested a Jaguar R2 at Valencia and Dr Reitzle did the same there.

In spite of all the problems the things at PPD and Jaguar Racing had been in order in spring 2002. But then Dr Wofgang Reitzle suprisingly left Ford, to sign a contract with Linde, the world´s leading producer of industrial gases, transportation technology and cooling equipment, to be the chairman of the board of directors very soon. Linde has got their headquarters in German Wiesbaden, the broadcasting company ZDF of his wife Nina have got their studios in Mainz, the city of birth of Jochen Rindt, on the other side of the River Rhine. The man to govern Ford´s motorsport activties now was Briton Richard Parry-Jones as the company´s Chief Technical Officer and Vice President. First he ordered an internal study about the efficiency of the Premier Performance Division lead by Niki Lauda, but after Irvine´s third place in Monza he hypocritically declared a vote of confidence in the Austrian. Meanwhile Lauda, who had got a contract with Ford until 2005, made his staff revise the Jaguar R3 using the newly installed windtunnel at Bicester. But the engine deal between Cosworth and Tom Walkinshaw of the Orange Arrows team, that had been negotiated by Niki Lauda in the middle of 2001, had developed to a farce. Walkinshaw, who was considered of illegal management by a London Court in 2002, had to give a personal bank guarantee for the engines delivered, but in spite of two points scored by Heinz Harald Frentzen, the Arrows team did not compete in all 2002 Grand Prix - what is exactly against the F.I.A. regulations. For 2003 the Arrows entry was not accepted by the world´s automobile association. Behind the back of Lauda Parry-Jones signed a contract with the team of Eddie Jordan for the same year, to re-name the Cosworth engines after three years of absence into Ford. That were the red warning lights in Niki lauda´s career at Jaguar. More and more he spoke to the press of the possibility of being sacked.

In the times of the great boom of the nineties of the century gone by, all Grand Prix teams had recruited an enormous amount of personnel. That had got the consequence, that a lot of people were occupied with doing things not neccessarily essential for running a racing team. Under normal circumstances this way the teams have got 20 or 30 per cent too much personnel on board, producing not only unneccessary costs, but also making the daily business slower. For this reason a diet is absolutely important, a fact, that was known by Eddie Jordan, the banker among the Grand Prix team principals, already in winter 2001/2002. He ordered a business consultant with researching his company and then he sent a lot of dismissal letters. Lean management and efficient structures had become a necessity at the change of the millennium and also at Jaguar a lot of employees had to go before the 2002 Christmas.

Niki Lauda´s personnel policy is that one of the hard, but quiet hand. He is open, direct and aim orientated. Who shows good performances, he spends full loyalty to. Who shows efforts, but has not got so much success by doing so, he helps. Who absolutely shows no will to work, will be fired immidiately. "Intrigues make me get angry," he once haid said on the climax of the air battle for Austria, the fierce fight between him and Austrian Airlines, that had been fought with nearly all means.

Luciano Burti, the gentle Brazilian, test driver even from the Stewart era, he transferred to the team of his old McLaren rival Alain Prost in the first half of the 2001 season to take Pedro de la Rosa, the Catalan,f rom there. Eddie Irvine, playboy and Guinness drinker from Ulster, being Michael Schumacher´s adjutant at Ferrari four years long, for that reason not neccessarily the number one driver of a team, was given Lauda´s support throughout two seasons. For 2003 Lauda had signed contracts with Australian Mark Webber and former Williams BMW test driver Antonio Pizzonia from Brazil. That was the last action done by Lauda as the head of PPD and Jaguar Racing.

About midday of 26th October 2002 three men of Ford gave a press conference in London. But their behaviour also was good enough for an Inquisition Court at the Middle Ages. There were Ford vice president Richard Parry-Jones, Sir Jackie Stewart with fresh traces of a tumour operation on the left part of his face and a guy named Tony Purnell, who was presented as the boss of Pi Research and personal advisor of Parry-Jones. At that Monday Niki Lauda normally would have attended the testing sessions of his new drivers Webber and Pizzonia at Barcelona. Instead of that he was in Vienna and already the whole morning there had been a lot of rumours without any break. Parry-Jones explained, that Ford had wanted to change their strategy in motorsport, and for that reason there had been the necessity of a British engineer as the head of PPD, to make a championship winning team out of Jaguar in the foreseeable future. About that so-called change of strategy Niki Lauda never had got a minimum of information, the details he got out of the media. The decision had been secret, but it had not been made over night. Such a spontanious action is impossible for a big tanker, the Ford group is. Decision making in front of those structures normally takes several months. Tony Purnell, not even known in the British public, had taken over Lauda´s position as the CEO of the Premier Performance Division in a surprise coup, the Coup d`Etat had been as fast as the Putsch in an African banana republic. Purnell once had studied in Manchester and Cambridge, a scholarship brought him to the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA in 1980. Purnell is an engineer and a management expert and like many Anglo-American elite university graduates he very soon was attracted by the industry to earn really money. In contrast to the usual academic biographies in Germany or France, that is the more reasonable way. In 1987 Purnell had founded the company of Pi Research, and after only a short time passing, he had received very quickly orders both from the industry and the motorsport field. About 300 employees were working for Pi Research in England and the USA. Purnell had sold his company to Ford in 1999 without leaving his presidential office. In 2001 Pi Research had been integrated into the Premier Performance Division and Niki Lauda had become his direct boss. Behind the back of the Austrian Purnell had risen to the personal advisor of Richard Parry-Jones from April 2002: This way Lauda´s dismantling had been prepared aim orientated and medium-term. Now only Sir Jackie Stewart had to recover more or less completely, to deliver the legitimation of Lauda replacement to the public in his charming, but non-committal way. The question, in which way Sir Jackie had been involved personally must be asked at least.

"I have noticed nothing. I am no political person. I am a straight guy doing my job."- for the first time in more than three decades involved in motorsport Niki Lauda was, also publicly, disappointed. Also in the very commercial world of sport of the 21st century values like fairness, chivalry and loyalty are counting. The Predator-Capitalism (this term once had been created by German national economist and Fedral Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) does not know such rules. The statue of Niki Lauda, famous like only US-President Bush or Pope John Paul II, had to be thrown off from his socle as it had been done twice at Ferrari, once at Lauda Air once nearly at McLaren. The charisma of Niki Lauda overshadows each brand on the global markets. That was the reason, why he had to go. In 1977 German news magazin DER SPIEGEL had brought a title story and one of the articles published there stood under the headline: No God, but very similar to God. Niki Lauda´s autobiography, written with a good portion of humour, had appeared in 1996 and it´s title is: The Third Life. The book ends with the following words: "If I do things I like, I will be good at it. If I am able to continue this way, I will be happy." Niki Lauda´s fourth life has just begun at Jaguar.

Klaus Ewald

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